Monday, June 28, 2010

Are you wanting to be shoved to the curb or be laughed at for your guild application skills?

Well, look no further!Follow this guide and you're sure to succeed at failing!

Preparation:

Don't worry about your gear's enchants, gems, or itemization. Once you find a guild to carry you through content, it'll all get replaced anyway, or at least the guild will provide you with free gems or enchants for your gear.

On that same note, don't farm heroics or pugs to better your gear. Crafted gear is also a waste of time if you can get your new guild to provide it for you. No one ever cares about your commitment to working on gearing your character yourself.

Don't research your class' proper spec or itemization. Your's is perfect and unique and you're able to solo critters in the Deeprun Tram all by yourself without any help.

Don't level your professions. You're looking for a guild to do that boring stuff for you, and profession-related bonuses in the higher skill levels really don't make any difference.

Don't look into the guilds available on your server that are currently recruiting your specific class/role at times available to you. That's too much work.

What application?

Post in trade chat that you're looking for a high-end raiding guild. Surely all high-end raiding guilds pick up their members from trade chat.

Whisper any member of the guild you're interested in, asking for an invite. This may involve explaining yourself, so make sure to tell them "i wan2 raid". You might have to find an officer to invite you.

If anyone mentions the word "application," ignore them. Applications are for jobs and schools, not games.

To ze forums!

Well, if that didn't pan out, it's time to hop on the forums. Pop into the fast-moving recruitment forums, put up a single post that gives little to no information, and you should be golden. Keep it sparse, because recruitment officers who are looking for you won't read through long, detailed, informative posts. TLDR LOL

Don't bump it. Everyone looks past the first page of the forums when looking through posts.

Blanket-bomb every "LFM" guild recruitment thread on the first page. Just tell them that you're looking for a guild. Don't bother reading their initial post that contains relevant info on their server, faction, raid times, raid size, or even what they're recruiting: you're too awesome for that.

If you want to include some details, don't include anything that can't be discovered by looking at wowarmory.

If you *do* choose to tell them more info about yourself, don't bother reading through their posted info. Make them do the work of figuring out if their raid times of 6-11 mesh with your requested times of 11 to 3 on a different time zone, or if you're even a role that they want. Clearly, if they want you, they'll get in touch.

If any of the guilds say to put in an app on their guild forums, just repost the same thing you posted to their wow-forums thread. Filling out apps to a zillion guilds is too hard when you can copy-paste what you think they need to know... even if it includes the things that are completely irrelevant to that guild and whatnot (like talking about how awesome it'd be to be one of their 25 people in their raids... for a 10-man guild). That's their job to worry about the details.

Okay, okay, filling out the guild's application:

If the above things don't pan out, it's time to actually submit an "application" thingy to the guild. Don't bother reading the instructions, just skim down the list and answer whatever parts you think are relevant.

If possible, shortly list points rather than describing them, even if the app instructions say otherwise. This avoids the aforementioned TLDR LOL

If the app asks for a screenshot, just say you don't know how.

If the app doesn't ask for a gearscore, this is a mistake on the guild's part. Make sure to include it, as well as your sustained DPS from a point in time where you were given free munching-aoe time on a pack of trash mobs while fully raid buffed... and round up. Even if you're a healer.

If the application asks about your offspec, skip it. There's no reason any guild would ever need to worry about your offspec or experience with it.

If the app asks about your raiding and guild history, be as sparse as possible and only include details about that specific character. The guild has no need to know that you have rage-quit from 7 guilds before apping to theirs, or that your only experience on all combined characters is a pug VoA you bribed your way into. As another example, your experience in ICC25 on your enh shaman will have no bearing on your fury warrior, so you can omit that, too... it's not like the strategy stays the same.

If the app asks about something you don't understand, skip it. It must not be important.

Personality-related questions are optional.

Make sure to highlight in every section how awesome you are. What can you improve upon? GEAR is the only thing holding you back, you are so awesome. What do you hate about raiding? People who hold you back from being awesome. Why are you apping to this guild? Cuz your other guild was hindering your awesomeness. Etc.

Link them pr0n (embed an image in the app or as a forum avatar/sig), even if the guild advertises that they're a family guild with children on their roster or if the GM is supposedly a girl. Girls don't play WoW.

Don't format the app for legibility. It's the forum's fault if it's hard to read your block of text.

When linking to your armory or any other external links, make sure they're incorrect and result in a 404. If the guild really wants you, they need to work for it by figuring out the correct address by themselves.

Have you apped to them before and failed?

App on a different character and hope they don't notice that it's the same email address.

Alternatively, app again on the same character. They probably have really poor memories and don't archive their past applications, right?

Finishing Touches:

Don't show up to the first interview. It's like playing coy and it'll make them want you more.

Troll in trade chat while they're watching to show them just how cool you really are.

Ask every single guild member what the status of your app is at least once a day. If you hurry them into a decision, hopefully they won't notice all of your severe problems.

If you find one of their members afk in the bank, spam /sit on them until they come back. It'll make them like you.

If any of the guild members has you on ignore for some reason, explain that must've been from one of the times that your account was hacked (and when asked, explain that you have no plans to get an authenticator...)

When you are politely declined, be sure to argue fervently with the declining officer. Put your best drama to bear and throw as much a temper tantrum as you can pull together without being 3 years old, to the point that they start to question if maybe you ARE a toddler.

13 comments:

I remember getting apps like that back in my old guild. They were wonderful for their entertainment value. We used to have to roll on who would get to be the one to reject them.

The special, "adult" links idea is a new one, though. I'll have to try that in place of the actual wowarmory link sometime.

It's a shame both classes that I have at all up to date are not what you're looking for (Disc/Shadow Priest and Prot/Arms Warrior). They fill the roles, but I'm sure buff management and such is more critical in 10H. It's been a while since I've been in a proper raiding guild, and I sure as hell miss having multiple runs at the same instance in a single week. I may app, now that I have time to play again, but class conflicts are conflicting. If I do, though, I'll spare you the pr0n.

Aye, I started working on the app as soon as I saw Kae's response. It's kinda long when you give thoughtful answers. Or maybe I'm just verbose. Either way, you'll have a printed book uploaded in a short while. If you're curious, you can go look "Malicave" up on the US wowarmory - he's the only one out there above level 10.

In TBC ...my old guild, we once had a paladin app that I had a bad feeling about.

So I turned WoW cyber stalker, and dug up as much info as I could about him. Including past guild history, and I even went to his old server to talk to his former guild's officers to find out about this guy.

Basically I was trying to find out if he was as lame and as much of a guild hopper as I had feared.

Even after all my detective work, the guild accepted his app after much vocalizing myself to the guild about my gut feelings on the guy.

Wouldn't you know it? He dropped guild and changed his name one night without a word. (only about a month after being accepted - after taking gear others needed)

Once we figured out who he was, he claimed he sold his account to relative who did all the name changing. At the same time the guy was guildless months later, so it's not like he left for a more progressed guild

TL:DR version ...

Trust your gut, even if others think you are crazy for it. You can also say "told you so!" When your fears finally transpire.